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SOTHEBY’S auction house had to remove two Peter Beard photographs from tomorrow’s sale of contemporary art when they were revealed to be fakes.

The two photos were listed in the catalogue as Lot 636, “1965, Rogue Rhino on Lariab Estate” and Lot 637, “Bull Elephant 1960, Kenya.” They were both estimated to sell for between $50,000 and $70,000.

Aristocratic and adventure-loving Beard (his great-grandfather started a railroad, his grandfather invented the tuxedo) was a Yale man once married to supermodel Cheryl Tiegs. Besides his house near the lighthouse in Montauk, he owns a ranch in Kenya, and for years has photographed wildlife in the Serengeti while also discovering local talent like Iman, who hails from Somalia. He was once nearly killed by an elephant, which charged and crushed him in 1996.

A Sotheby’s spokeswoman said, “We had contacted Mr. Beard’s studio [alerting him to the sale] but hadn’t heard back from him.” After the catalogs went out, Beard came into Sotheby’s headquarters on York Avenue and 72nd Street, examined the images and said they were forgeries, sources said.

Asked if the police had been brought in, the Sotheby’s rep said, “It would really be Mr. Beard’s decision as to whether this should be reported.” Contacted yesterday, the NYPD Major Case squad had no knowledge of the crime.

Sotheby’s wouldn’t say who the seller was or where the photos were now. Beard’s wife, Nejma, the daughter of an Afghan diplomat, has managed his career since 2001. She told us, “I’m not allowed to comment on it.”

The photographer – a bon vivant who used to party with Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali and Jacqueline Onassis – has become a prophet of doom on the subject of his beloved Africa.

On his Web site, Beard notes that when he first visited Kenya in 1955, the population was 5 million. Today it is 30 million. “The Pleistocene is paved over, cannibalism is swallowed up by commercialism, arrows become AK- 47s, colonialism is replaced by the power, the prestige and the corruption of the international aid industry,” he writes.